we'll watch the moon tonight
by saltzmans
Summary: she decided that stars were overrated –—ginnydraco


**notes **| for my darling, z. happy extremely late birthday!

* * *

hold on i feel that you could  
shine a little brighter

–_pioneers, the lighthouse and the whaler**  
**_

_._

it's a sort of corrupted beauty, isn't it? they've been twisted _oh _so far and _oh _so deep that inside, their souls are almost broken.

.

_cracksnapbreakdone_

_._

but ginny stopped caring a long time ago, and where ginny weasley goes, draco malfoy tends to follow. and really – really truly – they decide it doesn't matter. because outside they are so much more. they are beautiful, aren't they? they're lovely_gorgeous_stunning_striking _and there's something about them which shines.

.

_oh darling, how they burn._

.

except it's a broken kind of beauty. that's what everyone says. in the sun their icy skin shines and their empty eyes sparkle but in the shadows they wither and they shrink and they lie in the twisted silence of thin sheets, marked with the despair and the pain which seems to have ensnared their lives. they hold each other until the sun rises and then the cycle starts again.

.

_but sun melts ice – doesn't it?_

_._

they meet in the secret of astronomy tower – because isn't that where all lovers go to bleed? they watch the moon (she thinks stars are overrated) and he finds patterns in it's cold surface until they're too wrapped up in their own little fantasy to notice the sun rising over the horizon and their skin begins to crack, hands grasping at waist_hips_neck until they're nothing but statues, lost to a supernova.

.

_all stars are just balls of gas._

.

someone once told them that they were beyond repair. that their fucked up little paradise is nothing but a machine which runs on rusty cogs and wires that are all a-tangled; that their azure oceans are sullied with oil; the trees which whipped in the wind around caught fire a long time ago and their hearts have burnt to the ground.

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_baby, take care because soon you're going to stop working once and for all._

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here's the thing though – they both decided a longlonglong time ago that they weren't going to let anything melt them; that they were going to hold each other and whisper "quiet now sweetheart nothing's going to hurt you"in an endless mantra until they really believed it. but now their whole world is crumbling around them, and they can't bring themselves to believe it one single bit.

.

_being the last ones standing is kind of lonely._

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sometimes they come together in a blaze of heat and passion, pushed into alcoves and empty classrooms, ripping away shirts and pulling at hair until they're lost in the frenzy – the heat of the moment burning at every teenage fantasy as their teeth clash and they hold each other like the strings of fate are already pulling them apart. It's nothing like the stories they used to read – ginny's not a princess and draco's certainly not a prince – but neither of them are sure anything but each other matters anymore.

.

_they were never ones for fairytales anyway._

_._

once upon a time they believed they were on the top of the world. they danced in the clouds, frozen feet grazing the starry floor. they _owned _the stage and they were unforgettable. People watched and they remembered. They remembered the girl with the auburn hair and the boy with the flinty eyes who held her in his arms and whispered the universe into her ear.

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_the world's their chessboard, your move, darling._

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they're the king and queen. their thrones are black and cracked and their crowns of glass tangle in their hair but they still lounge in their castle, ruling over their broken subjects. they drink wine – or maybe it's vodka – straight from the bottle until their eyes are blurred and their minds are twisted and all that counts is that they are no longer pawns.

.

_they'll rule with an iron fist._

_._

one day they decide to climb a mountain. it's odd and spontaneous – kind of like them – but ginny's restless and the second they apperate at the bottom of st scafell the air is fresh and she wonders if this is what it feels like to be free. at the top, the stand on the mountains peak and the clouds protect them from the corruption of the world below them and when draco moves to kiss her, it's the first time she's ever felt pure.

.

_you can't hold onto your virtue forever, sweetheart._

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it doesn't last for long. these kind of things never do – they're the kind of things which can never been done _again _either. they just lurk at the back of their minds – that day when they were infinite and incredible and nothing seemed to matter. but now they're back. they're back in their mansion with closed doors and shuttered windows. they're back with the watching eyes and judging looks and the things that go bang in the night.

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_shadows twist and turn there's no escaping now._

_._

some nights they both have nightmares. ginny wake up, her eyes glazed and her face red with sweat, as she tries to recall the long corridors with flickering lights and the monster waiting for her at the end. her heart thuds against her chest and the darkness seems to wrap around her. draco lies by her and he knows that nothing he says will make it better, so he holds her hand and tries to forget about the demons which plague his own mind.

.

_maybe they should count their sins._

_._

over time they heal. of course there are still marks – the scars which line their backs and their chests, trailing down their thighs to their ankles – which will never heal. they'll be white lines drawn across their bodies which glow in the moonlight but they'll also be memories. they'll be memories of their time together. the memories which lurk in the back of their minds. memories like a mountain in the middle of their paradise where ginny and draco kissed and felt beautiful.

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_they were born to survive._


End file.
